Pets

Weekday mornings, Mona Rosenberg joins about a dozen technicians and fellow oncologists in a circle in the back room of her clinic to prepare for the day's cancer patients. They open the patients' files and fire off questions and suggestions about treatment. It's the kind of meeting that could happen in any clinic but with an important difference: The patients at Rosenberg's Veterinary Cancer Group have four legs.

The identity of the first puppy -- the one that the Washington press corps has been yelping about for months, the one President Obama has seemed to delight in dropping hints about -- leaked out Saturday. The little guy is a six-month-old Portuguese water dog given to the Obama girls as a gift by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Malia and Sasha named it Bo. Bo's a handsome little guy.

People are always falling for their pets. Apparently, some are falling over them, too. About 86,000 injuries each year occur when good people go klutzy around their animals and end up in emergency rooms. Most stumble over their cats and dogs. Others get pushed or pulled by a dog on a walk -- or are doing the chasing themselves. Some pet owners are tripped up by food bowls and pet toys.

The law of unintended consequences has seldom been more clearly illustrated than by the catfight unfolding from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Veterinarians who did not want cities meddling in their business persuaded the state Legislature to bar local governments from banning the practice of declawing cats -- beginning in 2010. Not wanting to be pushed around themselves, nearly half a dozen cities are rushing to prohibit the controversial procedure before the January deadline, striking a blow for rights both animal and municipal.